OPM states that the average rate hike is 3.2 percent, which is not too bad. The real news is not quite this good- Since none of the ‘averages’ are participation-weighted (that is, they pay no attention to what FEHB plans Feds actually select), the averages provided by OPM, GovExec, and FedTimes are essentially useless.

I’ll give you the only statistic that matters here, the one that applies to 40 percent of Feds. Continue reading →

As of 2014, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka ObamaCare (I will use the more popular nickname for the rest of the article) is being listed as an option on the military’s Tricare website.

There’s no neon sign at the top of the Tricare page alerting you to this fact. It’s not listed as a disclaimer, waiver, footnote, or disclosure on the page. You have to read between the lines and click around to figure this out.

On Tricare’s page about ObamaCare, it states that any of the Tricare plans (plus the ‘US Family Health Plan’) meets the Obamacare ‘Minimum Essential Coverage’ standard as of 2014. In other words, if you’re enrolled in one of the Tricare plans, you ‘don’t need to take any action at this time’.